Category: History

This morning I’m sharing photographs from the Kennebunkport Historical Society’s Salt Magazine Collection. The Salt Institute was located in Herbie Baum’s Boatyard in Kennebunk Lower Village in the 1970s when under the direction of Pamela Wood, the Kennebunk High School students interviewed Henry Weaver, the Southern Maine Federal Prohibition Agent. Wearver helped to bring down...

The Kennebunkport Historical Society is celebrating the decade of the 1920s this month. All my THROWBACK THURSDAY posts in July will include Kennebunkport pictures and events from the 1920s. 1920 The decade started out with a bang. On foggy January 1, 1920, two three-masted schooners, Charles H. Trickery and Mary E. Olys, got tangled up...

The Boston & Kennebunkport Seashore Company was the group of New England men who incorporated in 1872 to develop five miles of coastline from Cape Porpoise to Lord’s Point into a summer tourist colony. To entice prospective cottage builders, the Seashore Company commissioned The Moulton Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts to take a series of stereoscopics...

Kennebunk-born Burleigh S. Thompson moved to Boston as a young man. He eventually became a wealthy dealer in tea, coffee, and cigars and married Harriet Gove of Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1854. Burleigh and Harriet were already living in the c.1800 Perkins House in Kennebunkport Village by 1880. They moved here from Cohasset Massachusetts to be...

The iconic red towered building at the downriver side of the bridge in Kennebunkport was built by antique dealer, Fred B. Tuck in 1901 as the Colonial Inn. The building didn’t have a tower then and it was painted green. It was a combination tearoom and antique shop with a fancy soda fountain. By 1908...

Bickford’s Island, where the Cape Porpoise Pier now serves us all, was occupied in 1758 by Andrew Brown and his wife. One eighteenth century map we have at the Kennebunkport Historical Society refers to it as Brown’s Islands. Before 1800, John Bickford’s family lived there. Almost the whole island was sold to Seth H. Pinkham...

Old pictures of the lots in Union Square, near where The Boathouse Restaurant now stands at 21 Ocean Avenue with the 1950s River Cottage next door, are hardly recognizable. Larrabee & Furbish built a store there that sold stoves and tin in 1833. Otis Buzzell bought the building in 1879 along with all the stock...

Rivermead, at 19 Locke St Kennebunkport, was built by James Blunt between 1801 and 1814 on land that Capt. Thomas Perkins deeded to his son Abner in the first half of the 18th Century. Abner’s grandson, Clement T. Perkins, who was born at Blueberry Hill, acquired Rivermead in 1838 and lived there until his death...

Visitors to Goose Rocks Beach have periodically been protected by Lifeguards and the Coast Guard throughout its history as a summer resort. Mr. Coleman Joel, a 22-year-old Harvard Law student, perished trying to rescue a little girl named Betty Fairburn from the raging surf opposite the Downing cottage (Seen at top center) on August 15,...

26 Summer St Kennebunk was built in 1884/5 by Hartley Lord for his retirement from a long career at Boston making deep-sea fishing nets with twine from his brother Robert’s Twine Mill in West Kennebunk. After he died in 1912 the mansion passed to his grandson, Hartley Little Lord, who had four children that were...